What are the conditions for the implementation of the co-funded call?

The consortium must provide financial support to trans-national projects or implement such projects (partially or fully) themselves in accordance with the following conditions:

The projects must be trans-national projects involving at least two independent entities from two different EU Member States or Associated Countries.

The projects must be selected following a joint trans-national call for proposals. The consortium must publish the joint call on a dedicated webpage and promote it at national/regional level via their usual channels of communications to potential proposers. The joint call shall remain open for the submission of proposals for at least 60 days. The consortium must formally notify the Commission of the call and its content at least 30 days before the expected date of publication.

The consortium must make the joint call through a two-step procedure:

Step 1: review at national or trans-national level

Step 2: single international peer review.

A two-step procedure is necessary to ensure that only entities that are eligible for funding under the national programmes involved in the joint are invited to step 2 and that consortia can balance the requested funding and available funding per participating state between step 1 and step 2.

In step 2, the consortium must evaluate proposals with the assistance of at least three independent experts, on the basis of the following award criteria:

Excellence;

Impact;

Quality and efficiency of the implementation.

Proposals must be ranked according to the evaluation results. The selection must be made on the basis of this ranking. Only proposals with identical scores at the threshold of available funding may be selected according to the availability of funds in order to maximise the number of selected projects. An independent expert as observer, to be appointed by the consortium, shall assess the conformity of the implementation of the joint call and, in particular, review the proper implementation of the independent international peer review and the establishment of the ranking list of trans-national projects.

The consortium must take all lawful steps to ensure confidentiality of information and documents obtained during the evaluation and selection procedures of the joint call.

After the end of the evaluation the consortium must submit to the Commission the following:

The ranking list(s) of the projects;

The observers' report on the evaluation;

The joint selection list of the projects to be funded, and

From each consortium partner participating in the joint call, a formal and duly signed commitment on availability of funds for the selected projects.

The consortium must furthermore submit to the European Commission after the end of the evaluation information on each project selected for funding, including data on each participant and abstracts of the project proposal, in a format specified by the European Commission, for publication and evaluation purposes. This information must be updated at the end of the action (information on each funded project, including data on each participant and overview of the results).

Not all of the data collected in this template will be visible on the ERA-LEARN website. The data related to budgets and contact information will remain confidential and will be used for aggregated analysis for the annual report and for other specific analysis by the European Commission.

The requirement to provide an independent observer’s report on the evaluation is mandatory for all EU co-funded joint calls including FP7 ERANET Plus projects, joint calls implemented under Article 185 initiatives and the main [co-funded] joint call of Horizon 2020 ERA-NET Co-fund projects.